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The Intelligent Universe PDF

260 Pages·1984·12.644 MB·English
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ISBN 0-03-07DDfl3-3 FPT This major work by the eminent theoretical physicist and distinguished author challenges our traditional beliefs about the origins and nature of the Universe and the evolution of life on Earth. In a lucid and engaging style, Fred Hoyle builds an authoritative case against the most sacred cows of the scientific establishment. The author argues persuasively that we owe our existence to another intelligence which, as part of a deliberate plan, created a structure for life that is far too complex to have risen by random processes. Among the award-winning scientist’s astounding revelations: • In pre-Copemican days, the Earth was erroneously thought to be the geometrical and physical center of the Universe. Nowadays, in seemingly respectable scientific circles, the Earth is taken to be the biological center of the Universe - an almost incredible repetition of the initial error. Yet nothing is clearer than the fact that all life processes are cosmic in their scope. • The Darwinian theory of evolution is shown to be plainly wrong. Life has evolved because biological components of cosmic origin have been progressively assembled here on Earth. These components have arrived from outside, bome in from the cosmos on comets. • Bacteria can survive in the extreme conditions of outer space. In contrast to what we are told by NASA, it looks as if the Viking missions in 1976 proved that life does exist on Mars, and there is now conclusive evidence that life exists throughout the solar system. • The key to understanding evolution is the virus. The viruses responsible for evolution and the viruses responsible for diseases are very similar. They are different sides of the same coin. • Despite frequent reports of UFOs, the facts show that space travel beyond our own solar system will always be out of reach. The only space travellers are cosmic microorganisms - the components of the creation and evolution of life. • There are no differences between the atoms in our bodies and those in inanimate matter - the atomic building blocks of both are the same. It is the arrangement of the atoms that is unique to life. Beautifully illustrated throughout with photographs, drawings and diagrams to support the flow of argument, The Intelligent Universe presents in clear terms to the general reader an all-embracing view of the cosmos that succeeds in fusing the empiricism of the rationalist with the moral instincts of the philosopher. It is a view that fashions a new concept of the Universe, a vision of an infinity fuelled with information and fired by intelligence. 0384 THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE — Holt, Rinehart and Winston New York For Geoffrey The Intelligent Universe was conceived, edited, and designed by Dorling Kindersley Limited, 9 Henrietta Street, London WC2E 8PS. Copyright © 1983 by Dorling Kindersley Limited Text copyright © 1983 by Fred Hoyle All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form. First published in the United States in 1984 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 383 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10017. Published simultaneously in Canada by Holt, Rinehart and Winston of Canada, Limited. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 83-81955 ISBN: 0-03-070083-3 First American Edition Editor David Bumie Art Editor Peter Luff Managing Editor Alan Buckingham Art Director Stuart Jackman Editorial Director Christopher Davis Printed and bound in Italy by Amoldo Mondadori, Verona 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 ISBN 0-03-D7D0fi3-3 CONTENTS FOREW ORD 6 1 -CHANCE AND THE UNIVERSE 11 2 - THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DARWIN 25 3 • LIFE DID NOT ORIGINATE ON EARTH 51 4* THE INTERSTELLAR CONNECTION 83 5 • EVOLUTION BY COSMIC CONTROL 109 6 • W HY AREN’T THE OTHERS HERE? 139 7 -AFTER THE BIG BANG 163 8 • THE INFORMATION-RICH UNIVERSE 189 9 • W HAT IS INTELLIGENCE UP TO? 217 10 •THE INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE 241 INDEX 252 FOREWORD Everybody must wonder from time to time if there is any real purpose in life. Of course we all have immediate aims, to succeed in our careers, to bring up our children, and still in many parts of the world simply to earn enough to eat. But what of a long-range purpose? For what reason do we live our lives at all? Biology, as it is presently taught, answers that the purpose is to produce the next generation. But many of us are impelled to persist in wondering if that can be all. If the purpose of each generation is merely to produce the next, does the overall end result achieved sometime in the distant future have any purpose? No, biology answers once more. There is nothing except continuity, no purpose except continued existence, now or in the future. If that is so, what is the use of that unique feature of our species, the moral code present in all human societies? Its use lies in promoting our continued existence, the biologist replies. Because humans achieve more by working together in groups, a concern for the welfare of others besides ourselves promotes community survival. Even if we grant for a moment that this proposition is true, so what? There are many things that would assist our survival which we do not possess. Throughout the history of man it would often have been an advantage in moments of great danger to be able to run like a hare or to soar away from the danger up into the sky like a bird. But we can do neither. These examples show that the logic is back-to-front. Just as desire does not automatically generate that which is desired, so advantage does not automatically generate that which would be an advantage, either in biology7 or elsewhere. Man’s moral sense is a fragile affair. We have to bolster it with a tangle of laws because in itself virtuous behaviour is not predominantly advantageous to survival. In many cases in our daily lives cheating is more profitable than truthfulness, while brutality and aggression are all too often profitable to the survival of nations. Instead it would be easy to build a 6 considerable argument to show that the moral sense in man persists despite all the temptations which constantly work against it. I came across the difficulties with which the moral sense in man has to contend quite early in life. My father was a machine-gunner in the First World War, surviving miraculously in the trenches of northern France and Flanders over three long years. He was one of the few who came through the immense Ludendorff attack of 21 March 1918. His machine-gun post was overrun, not by the usual few hundred yards but by miles, so that he found himself far within the enemy line. My father told me afterwards that this was his worst moment of the war, because of his ever-present expectation of encountering a lone German, with the prospect that, without the possibility of verbal communication between them, the two would be committed to fight it out to the end in armed combat. It was some years later that I saw the solution to my father’s problem. If you were alone in no-man’s land, faced by a German with whom you could not talk intelligibly, the best thing to do—unless you had an unhealthy taste for combat to the death—would be to remove your helmet. It the German then had the wit to do the same you would both perceive the fact that, hidden deliberately by the distinctive helmets, you were both members of the same species, almost as similar as two peas in a pod. Ever since this early perception I have believed that wars are made possible, not by guns and bombs, not by ships and aircraft, but by uniforms, caps and helmets. Should the day ever come when it is agreed among the nations of the world that all armies shall wear the same uniforms and helmets then I will know for sure that at long last war has been banished from the Earth. So far from there being any prospect ot this happening, the first thing that every emerging nation does with its army, even ahead of acquiring physical weapons, is to clothe its soldiers in distinctive uniforms, thereby artificially creating a new “subspecies” of man, sworn to destroy other artificially created “subspecies”. Such then are the odds against which the moral sense in us all has to contend. The modem point of view that survival is all has its roots in 7 Darwin’s theory of biological evolution through natural seleo tion. Harsh as it may seem, this is an open charter for any form of opportunistic behaviour. Whenever it can be shown with reasonable plausibility that even cheating and murder would aid the survival either of ourselves personally or the community in which we happen to live, then orthodox logic enjoins us to adopt these practices, just because there is no morality except survival. If I were called on to defend orthodox science against this unpleasant accusation, I would argue that it is not so much a case of biology influencing the state of society as it is of the state of society controlling the thinking of biologists. I could begin by demonstrating that the ideas of Darwin’s theory were already in place by 1830, almost a third of a century before the publication in 1859 of Darwin’s book The Origin of Species. But while the ideas were there already, the state of society was not yet ripe. An important change was needed before the ideas were called forth. It is easy to see what this change was. By the 1860s, the industrial scene had burgeoned. Companies were competing fiercely in the production of similar products, railways were competing for traffic, nations were competing for Lebensraum. While the latter was not particularly new, the cut-and-thrust of commerce with its threat of ruin on a grand scale certainly was. Improvement of products was the key to survival. From practical experience in commerce it was then a short step to the concept of an improvement of species through natural selection—the Darwinian theory. Except for a very few scientists, everybody overlooked a crucial step in the analogy between commercial and natural selection. Commercial selection works only because at the back of it there are human intellects constantly striving to improve the range and quality of their products. Commercial selection is therefore very far from the purposeless affair natural selection is taken to be in biology. In reality, natural selection acts like a sieve. It can distin­ guish between species presented to it, but it cannot decide what species shall be sieved in the first place. The control over what is presented to the sieve has to enter terrestrial biology from outside itself—not just from outside the living world, 8

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